Sunday, October 02, 2016

Lao Tzu said that in order to acquire knowledge, you need to add something every day.

As hunters and gatherers of knowledge, we are all focused on life-long learning and sharpening the saw every day.

We attend courses, seminars, workshops, join universities and have turned ourselves into a continuous improvement project.

But then Lao Tzu went on to say that in order to acquire wisdom, you need to let go of something every day.

We need to unlearn.

We need to let go of much of our old knowledge-baggage.

We need to let go of knowledge we acquired in the past that is holding us back, preventing us from moving forward and creating real breakthrough success.

Indeed, we may find that the majority of knowledge-items we took on board in the past, through our formal education, through socialization or even through the advice of well-meaning parents and friends, will prevent us from fulfilling our true personal potential.

Old, often inappropriate values, norms, beliefs, traditions and self-concepts get in the way.

So should we throw them all overboard?

Hmm...

One coaching belief is that unless you learn to love your past, you will not be able to let it go and daringly design your destiny.

You can't let go of what you don't love first.

Letting go of past baggage does not necessarily mean that it was bad. To the contrary - learn to love those past memories (the good, the bad and the really ugly) for the rich learning they provided you with. But be selective about which pieces of past learning you take with you on your future journey.

The others?

You may polish them up and put them in your mental museum and go and visit them from time to time, if you really feel like it.

To acquire wisdom - learn to let go.

Learn to travel light.

Be very choosy about which beliefs you allow to form your future destiny.

The more you let go, the lighter you travel, the more you will become attractive to great new opportunities.

They say that's why angels can fly - they take themselves very lightly !

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

There are many different surveys and lists on the keys to successful leadership. Some of the lists make intuitive sense. And some feel like someone desperately had to fill just one more column in a glossy magazine. Through our research, we have identified the following keys to success.

Which of these success keys are you currently using?

1. Strong Foundation

Highly successful leaders are absolutely clear about their identity – who they are, what they are here for and where they are going. They have a deep, strong personal foundation and a tremendous trust in life, themselves and their relationships. Out of this trust, they have developed a strong sense of self-worth and self-respect.

2. Healthy Lifestyle

They live a healthy, well-balanced lifestyle. They look after themselves and their families well. Highly successful leaders tend to be mentally, physically and emotionally fit and seldom ill. They handle stress and problems well. When problems arise, they usually make sure that they solve them once and for all.

3. Authentic Presence

These leaders are real characters! They have a strong personality and are absolutely authentic. They love what they are doing. They live in the present moment and manifest the achievement of their objectives in the ‘here and now’.

4. Designed Destiny

Highly successful leaders take on full responsibility for their life. They are die-hard optimists with an ‘everything is possible’ attitude. They are constantly moving forward to the next project. They always get up again if they should stumble. They have crystal-clear goals, as well as a huge passion for life.
5. Clean Conscience

Really successful leaders have a clean conscience. They have no skeletons rotting away in their closets. They have got rid of all guilt, forgiven those who may have wronged them, made peace with their past, and celebrate the present. They have clear-channel relationships and have set up their life to be a guilt-free zone.

6. Spiritual Awareness

Highly successful leaders are spiritually aware. They have made peace with life and have learned to go with the flow. They have developed a healthy, trusting relationship with themselves, the world around them and their Creator. Ultimately, many really successful businesspeople say that their deep spirituality is the true source of their success.

7. Maverick Leadership

They are real mavericks and charismatic leaders. At a young age, they were frequently the leaders of the pack. They are frequently at the centre of the action, building strong, cohesive business communities. They truly care for others. The super successful earn the right to lead by exuding a strong personal presence and a natural sense of authority, positively impacting their environment.

8. Focused Energy

Successful leaders focus their energy well and never waste their power. Their hearts, minds and environment are uncluttered. They have learned to manage their state and put themselves into peak form in an instant, if required. They have learned to leverage small efforts and investments into great results. They are usually financially independent and have developed strong business systems that allow them to earn their living elegantly. At the same time, they frequently surprise their environment by ‘going the second mile’, giving more than was expected.

9. Intuitive Insight

Highly successful business people rely on their intuition when making a decision. They know their own needs, values, drivers, resources and thinking patterns well. They are clear about the contextual influences they are active in and are thus quick to decide. Their ability to act based on their intuitive insight, their ‘sixth sense’ or ‘gut feelings’ sets successful leaders apart from the rest.
10. Professional Attitude

The really successful leaders tend to own (a substantial share in) their own businesses. They have moved from compensating jobs to being entrepreneurs. They have switched from consumerism to ownership. They have shifted their approach from selling hours to leveraging their business system. As true professionals, they are highly dedicated, committed and often sticklers for quality, constantly improving themselves and their business.

11. Focused Action

They have a clear focus on what it is they want to achieve. They keep a ‘big picture’ approach to business and don’t lose themselves in the details. Successful leaders consistently take action on their plans and objectives, creating momentum to propel themselves forward towards success. They focus on earning their income elegantly and have fun doing so.

12. Social Activity

Really successful leaders are socially active and well integrated. They have acquaintances in all social spheres and actively nurture healthy relationships. They share their wealth, offer support and get involved in charitable activities. At the same time, it is often true that the really successful leaders do not ‘need’ others, in many ways. They are self-sufficient, even independent of the opinions of others.

Find out more
about how you can benefit from the secrets of true elegance:

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

In order to succeed with elegance, we need to have a reserve - an inner reservoir of power.

Not too much, not too little - just the right reserve to provide us with the peace and uncluttered focus we need to succeed.

In his superb book "Half Time", Bob Buford tells a short story about Konosuke Matsushita, the chairman of the Japanese Matsushita company.

As Buford says, "Matsushita follows the practise, not uncommon in Asia, of retreating to his garden from time to time in order to live a contemplative and reflective life. "

And, according to Buford, the effect of this garden time is quite powerful: " When Matsushita walks into a room, the awe is palpable. Without saying a word, he bespeaks a powerful centeredness and elegant reserve."

This type of inner reserve does not need to demand respect.

It attracts respect, like a strong, powerful magnet.

For himself, Buford has learned from this to take time out to reflect, to get away from the business bustle. "My few hours of uninterrupted reading and thinking are the wellspring from which I draw living water to nurture the activities of the rest of my week".

What a change of perspective from the usual objective-setting game we normally get caught up in!

Instead of pushing ourselves to achieve, we might be better off by taking time out of our hectic schedule to get quiet, understanding who we really are, and by strengthening our personal magnet, attracting success effortlessly.

Now that's elegance !

And if we should go ahead with our plans and objectives, let's make sure we scatter some sunlight on the path before us, sprinkle stardust and magic to the people around us, and radiate light, peace and healing to the four corners of the world.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

The glamorous world of glossy magazines
and celebrity designers makes fashion feel like fun, whilst dictating what is
in or out, what is hot or not, explaining to us in colorful detail all of the
current must haves, and the no-goes. Fashion dictates act as social norms most
of us try very hard to comply with, in order to belong to the in crowd.

We all want to be invited to the party,
and the fashion gurus will tell us what we need to buy, be and do, in order to
make the list.

The fashion industry essentially caters to
our need for social acceptance, inclusion, safety and survival, whilst at the
same time providing us with a sense of orientation and direction, a way for us
to navigate the minefields of the social context we live in. Fashion will even
help us to define our own identity, maybe as a Cosmo-girl, an Armani-guy, or
would you prefer to be a sophisticated Prada-lady?

Fashion does an incredible job at pleasing
the masses, providing a sensation of freshness and novelty through the updated
styles, designs and color schemes the industry propagates every season, along with the
perfect excuse for us to shop until we drop, feathering our nest with fun new
things, activating our feel-good hormones, whilst keeping us temporarily amused
and distracted.

Fashion provides a feel-good factor, whilst
the shopping fix lasts, making sure we are supported by our local dealers with
fix after fix, keeping us happy in a permanent fashion high.

Most major media companies support this
fun factor by cooperating closely with the fashion police, catching fashion
offenders red-handed and exposing their crimes publically, whilst providing us
with perfect examples and photoshopped images of celebrities doing the right
thing. The industry knows that fashion addicts respond well to social
conditioning and mind-control.

Fashion provides a relatively safe way of
having fun, as long as you comply and fit in.

Fashion is even more fun, when you get to
create and dictate the norms, I am sure.

As Coco Chanel said:

“I don’t do fashion. I am fashion.”

The high priests of fashion wield an
incredible amount of power and influence, not just within their own business empires.
Their social impact is often world-wide, affecting more than just how we dress
and paint ourselves. The media and marketing specialists make sure the fashion
industry continues to make more money by ensuring that you and I toe the line.

However, if you scratch the surface of
this glossy industry, you may find there is nothing beneath it. It is in many
respects purely superficial, devoid of meaning or substance, keeping us in a permanent
high, but never providing us with any true, lasting sense of satisfaction.

We are conditioned to live from one fix to
the next, in order to forget the pain caused by the hole in our soul.

Interestingly, it seems that when we allow
inner healing to take place and become whole, we no longer need the fashion
fix. Making our own choices and becoming true to ourselves provides a much
richer, more fulfilling life-experience than what fashion has to offer. Coco
Chanel nailed it when she said, “beauty begins the moment you decide to be
yourself.”

This unique, individual, personal type of
beauty emanates a powerful sense of grace, poise, style, inner calm, and an
irresistible attractiveness. Such elegant beauty emerges when individuals take back
ownership of their lives and make healthy decisions on a daily basis. The
fashion industry may try to persuade you not to go down this route, threatening
to excommunicate you, if you do.

Elegance would invite you to take back
control and get in the driver’s seat.

As Isabella Rossellini said: “Elegance is
the manifestation of an independent mind.”

Find
out more about how you can benefit from the secrets of true elegance:

Thursday, July 14, 2016

With a little help from the storytelling gurus, business
developers, sales executives and marketing specialists around the globe are
learning to craft better stories that sell more – a lot more!

Many of the
resulting business sales stories are so well crafted, with the underlying commercial
intention woven into the narrative so elegantly, that their sales messages
manage to bypass the critical conscious thinking filters, thus directly
influencing and impacting the subconscious of the listeners.

Business
sales stories speak directly to the part of the clients and prospects where the
real decisions are made.

As a
result, such stories can get people to make decisions they normally wouldn’t.

The fact is: stories sell!

But if you
tell stories with the sole intent of tricking people into making decisions they
normally would not, something deep down within your listeners will begin to
distrust you - over time.

Manipulative
storytelling tends to leave a lingering bad taste.

In recent
years I have seen many business executives developing a strong resistance to
such manipulative business storytelling techniques.

Now, don’t
get me wrong!

I am not
against storytelling.

To the contrary - I
really love to hear a good story!

Storytelling
is a wonderful, powerful leadership skill.

Indeed, I
sense that many corporations are in dire need of an engaging, inspiring,
trustworthy Chief Storyteller.

But having said
that, if your only reason for telling stories is to push your products or
solutions, you will find your audience wising up to your tricks very fast.

When this
happens, you will see your clever plans fail quickly and miserably.

The key is
to tell true stories, free from manipulative intent, focused on enabling an
honest, respectful, deep dialogue.

Creating Engagement And Commitment

Throughout
history, there have been people with a special gift and responsibility to
uphold traditions and impart age-old wisdom to their people through stories.
Fables, fairy stories, parables, metaphors and folklore all conveyed deep
insights and learning to the young children – and anybody else willing to
listen attentively. Some stories were based on experience, some on pure
fiction, and many would seem to consist of a blend of both, resulting from
conscious reflection and subconscious processing of events into a tapestry of
wonderful tales and legends. In the days before Hollywood these stories would
provide mental movies, filled with emotion, tragedy, victories, and happy ends.

Some would
contain subtle messages, providing opportunities to gain new insights, to learn
and grow.

Others
would drive home their points with a sledgehammer.

But all of
these stories used words to paint pictures and energize emotions as the raw
material which our subconscious needs, in order to pattern, structure and design
our lives.

Why is it
that most of us like a good story?

Why do
children want to hear the same story over and over again, and never tire of it?

And why do
they want to hear the story told in the exact same way again and again, no
modifications or enhancements allowed?

Stories
fuel our subconscious mind.

Mind-movies
paint pictures of the world.

Storytelling
helps us identify patterns and meaning in the midst of the frequently hectic,
chaotic context we live in.

As far as
we know, a large part of our mental processes are based on creating and
recognizing patterns. Even small children feel intuitively drawn to pretty
patterns, elegant designs, and well-defined structures.

Stories
extract patterns out of the chaos we are surrounded with.

By
listening to stories, we begin to sense that chaos itself may just be a
different form of order, with a more subtle pattern to it.

Business
stories help us to identify the relevant patterns in our business context. They
also speak to us at a deep level of our being, involving us emotionally, thus producing
a positive bonding effect.

In
contrast, many high-tech PowerPoint presentations and prescriptive pep-talks
tend to speak primarily to our intellect. They allow us to lean back, evaluate
what is being said intellectually and analyse what effects the presenter’s talk
might have on us, our business, and our personal plans – without necessarily
creating any sense of true engagement.

Relevant stories
respect the fact that the listener has all the resources he or she may need to
solve problems. Our subconscious mind responds to the challenges, which such
stories provide, by finding unique solutions that fit our personal experience
and needs. Such solutions are much more likely to find our commitment and
willingness to take action towards producing the desired results, as the
process allows us to participate in the creation of the solution and actively
design it with our unique set of resources.

Relevant
business stories naturally lead in to a deep dialogue, engaging all parties
involved in exploring the situation, the underlying causes and the resulting
problems, various options and potential solutions, relevant scenarios and
required resources, as well as possible obstacles and ways of overcoming them.

Such
profound business conversations tend to result in a substantially higher degree
of engagement, commitment and a willingness to take focused action.

So don’t
try to trick your clients and prospects with clever business storytelling
techniques.

Instead,
tell your powerful business stories in order to open up a profound, respectful,
two-way conversation.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Like Jane Doe in the NBC Blindspot series, we
are all covered in tattoos, scars and wounds our life experiences have etched on
our being. Most of the time, these tattoos remain invisible, as we have all learned
to cover up, in order to fit in. We have forced ourselves to camouflage the
pain of the past so well, that we may no longer be conscious of it.

Over time,
these tattoos seem to take on a life of their own

If you have ever found yourself procrastinating or getting
in your own way, you may have encountered the tattoos, scars, wounds and
self-sabotage forces active in your blind spot. My experience as an executive
coach indicates that no amount of strategizing, objective setting, prioritizing,
visualizing, affirming, meditating or taking massive action will stop these
negative forces from sabotaging your success, until you learn to deal with them
appropriately.

Instead of covering them up, we should learn from
lessons contained in the scars.

As in the Blindspot series, the clues are in the tattoos!

If you learn to analyse these clues and solve the
riddles they pose, you can effectively turn
your blind spot into your sweet spot!

In order to do so, you first need to uncover your
personal life-tattoos and find out what forces are at work in your blind spot. Let
me start with a word of warning:

Don’t get hypnotized in the process!

For
as Nietzsche said:

“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

You need to know enough about what is going on
in your blind spot in order to be able to take positive, remedial action – but
not more.

Don’t get sucked in.

Or else you may go missing in action…

Engaging your blind spot may often feel like staring
into a deep, black hole, made up of painful fragments of a past you might
prefer to forget.

For most of us, our lives seem to consist of
incompatible fragments.

The changes we experience virtually every day in our
lives hardly link up to the past, as we knew it. Shifts in our reality happen
as radical breaks with the past, with our history and age-old traditions. In
addition, the permanent pressure to remain agile, mobile and in a constant
state of flux prevents us from pushing down roots, blooming where we are
planted and really nurturing deep social relationships.

In this context, it is becoming increasingly difficult
for us to see our past, present and future and our emerging identity as a
coherent, consistent story. During our lifetime, we all create a mental map of
the world and how it works, an abstraction, which helps us to navigate our
encounters in society. However, most of us also suffer through some negative
experiences in the process, and we tend to mark these on our mental map of the
world as dangerous, hazardous, risky places. Over time, such areas on our
mental maps can turn into our personal
Bermuda triangle, a no-man’s land, a taboo zone in which emotional forces
reside, which take on a life of their own, sabotaging our ability to create
satisfying success.

This
taboo area is what I call the blind spot.

In medicine, the blind spot is the area in the visual
field, which corresponds to the zone on the optic disc of the retina in your
eyes, where there is a lack of light-detecting photoreceptor cells. The brain
interpolates the missing input-data, which is not available in the area of the
blind spot, based on information gained from the surroundings, as well as
information obtained from the other eye, so that we are usually not aware of
the blind spot’s existence.

Similarly, in our personal blind spot, we may seem to
be unable to take in new information. Our past experiences have shaped and
cemented our beliefs, assumptions, and expectations of how the world works to
such an extent, that we have literally become blind to what is really going on
in and around us in such an area. The life-tattoos have taken over and rule
over our perception of reality.

We interpolate, making assumptions about what is going
on around us, based on factors we are no longer conscious of, forces at work in
our blind spot which are no longer under our control.

In fact, these subconscious factors often control us.

More often than not, the forces active in our blind
spot will sabotage our ability to make effective decisions to change our life for
the better.

So, what
size is your blind spot?

You probably have no clue.

Most people don’t.

In my coaching work with executives and business
owners, I frequently find that this blind spot is quite large and powerful.

For many
individuals, I have found the following negative elements tend to be at
work in their personal blind spot:

How could you verify what is really going on in your
personal blind spot?

One place is to be fully honest with yourself about
your cravings, compulsions and addictions.

Whether you are a workaholic, shopaholic, alcoholic,
diet-addict, fitness-fanatic or if you feel compelled to convert everybody you
encounter to your own world view or religion, you may need to ask yourself what
is really going on.

Compulsive
behaviour is often caused by the need to stuff the hole in your soul.

The first thing I would suggest is to ask your best
friend, your spouse or significant other about what they see in your blind
spot. They may not know everything about your blind spot, but they probably
have a relatively good idea of what it includes, as well as hunches about where
and how it may be helping or sabotaging you.

Ask them to provide you with their insights
constructively.

Their
feedback may be difficult to digest.

The more intense your reactions to their insights turn
out to be, the more relevant and true their feedback may actually be, too.

So, be brave!

Don’t interrupt them.

Listen deeply and digest what they tell you.

As a note of caution – don’t be surprised if you
suddenly start having psychosomatic reactions when encountering your blind
spot, including:

-Rashes

-Allergies

-Headaches

-Pains in your abdomen, your neck, back and joints

-Heartburn and indigestion

-Nightmares and difficulties finding sleep

-Etc.

If the symptoms and reactions become intense, get
professional help.

Having said all that, I have found that the forces
active in the blind spot are often not only well intentioned – they often
actually hold the key to the truly satisfying type of success most of us
desire!

So what are the possible positive ingredients of your
blind spot?

What positive clues may be hidden in our life-tattoos?

These often include:

- Childhood dreams of who you were truly meant to be

- Things you truly enjoyed being, doing and having,
before you were forced to fit in

- Hidden talents you may have never tapped into since
you were a child

- Dormant potential which could help you to create truly satisfying success- An intuitive sense for what is right, just, and
meaningful

- A place of rest, peace and inner joy

- Etc.

My sense is that society has forced many of us to hide
the true side of ourselves for so long, we may need to enter the blind spot to
find out who we really are!

Learn to read, understand and redesign your own life-tattoos.

If you would like to find out more about how you can turn your blind spot into your sweet spot,
check out our Stop Self Sabotage self-study course, which you can get through
our webshop at

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Many years ago, my
art teacher showed me how to create
engagement by elimination.

Breathing down my
neck, he startled me by shouting:

“Stop trying to draw that horse, Andy! What you are sketching here is a
highly-strung Arabian thoroughbred, which will never stand still long enough
for you to get it down on paper.”

He had sidled up behind me, as I sat there in the little zoo behind the
circus tent, and proceeded to give me a lecture at the top of his voice, so that
all the other students and visitors could learn this lesson, too.

I cringed.

“Andy, what you need to do is to NOT
draw the horse. Don’t even look at it! Draw everything around it first and just
leave out the space where the horse will emerge!”

He was doing his zen thing again.

Draw without drawing.

See without seeing.

Uh oh!

But I complied, trying not to look at the horse as I sketched the
context around it until – swoosh!

It was as if the white space I had left out for the horse started
vibrating!

I touched the paper with my pen and within seconds it looked as if this
horse was going to gallop right out of my picture!

“That’s it, Andy! See! Don’t focus too single-mindedly on your
objective. Create the right context instead, and your desired object will
emerge! Now how’s that for an Aladdin’s lantern, eh?”

I later learned
that many leading artists applied the concept of elimination by creating white
space in their paintings to stimulate the observer’s imagination. By leaving
out key pieces of information in their works of art, they were able to get their
audience’s inquisitive mind to fill in the gaps. Creating a vacuum is
seductive, as our subconscious mind will invariably grapple with the fact that
something is missing. Our curiosity drives us to try and solve the riddle the
artist has presented.

Great art stimulates
the mind by creating cognitive tension.

Essentially, the
gap creates engagement.

As Matthew E. May
describes in his book In Pursuit Of Elegance, there are
three steps artists, designers, innovators, negotiators and business leaders
must use, in order to create an irresistible
sense of attraction to their product or solution. If you wish to create a
strong sense of engagement and commitment in the people you encounter, try
using the following steps:

First, arouse their
curiosity by demonstrating a moderate gap in their knowledge (without becoming
an obnoxious know-all). If they perceive the gap as being too large, it may seem
like an insurmountable problem, which their mind may refuse to take on. On the
other hand, if the gap is perceived as being too small, it may seem irrelevant
and again fail to create engagement. So the trick is to make the gap just the
right size, to generate optimum engagement.

As a second step,
you should provide your counterpart with just enough additional, relevant contextual
information to help them develop a solution to close the gap.

And finally, you
should give them enough time to really engage and grapple with the gap.

Essentially, you
want to allow them to draw their own conclusions.

This may sound
like a dangerous approach, as you might incur a loss of control, but if you
facilitate the process well, you will find the opposite to be true.

The great thing
about this process lies in the fact that our mind absolutely detests a vacuum. At
the same time, filling in the gaps is a satisfying process, which provides us
with a great sense of completion, accomplishment, and significance - feelings
we all deeply crave. By using this elegant process of engaging their creative
mind, you get the people you engage with to invest in the creation of the final
solution, for which they develop a strong sense of ownership.

In sales and
business negotiations, this creates opportunities to get clients to willingly
accept larger investments, at higher price-points, because they have already
created a bond with the solution at a deep level of their being.

So, next time you
find yourself working hard, trying to get people to engage and commit – don’t!

Instead, create an
elegant gap, and let the cognitive tension generate the desired engagement and
commitment for you!

Find out more about how you can benefit from the
secrets of true elegance:

Monday, February 08, 2016

Tragically, just over a week ago the world’s best
restaurant chef decided to end his life. He was at the very top of his game
when he decided to leave.

Many executives I meet in my coaching practice are
totally focused on achieving peak performance. To strengthen their will-power,
they compete in iron-man races, the New York Marathon, or else they go cycling
100 miles before breakfast to watch the sun-rise just for fun on weekends.

It sometimes seems to me that these executives can
only either burn-out or bore-out.

Many of these peak performers are focused so
laser-like on success, that when they fail to succeed according to their own
high standards, they kick the bucket and all of their success becomes
meaningless. We’ve heard of too many successful executive and celebrity
suicides in the news in recent years.

I have found that peak performance bears special
risks, which are not immediately obvious. Frequently the peak experience brings
with it an initial rush of adrenalin, endorphins and euphoria, followed by a
sense of overwhelm, emptiness and a lack of significance.

Victory is often followed by depression.

The sequencing is tricky here, because we may celebrate
and party with the peak performers right after their successful achievement,
but then we leave them alone when the dark night of the soul visits them. Despite
(or maybe because of) their greatest achievements, peak performers may lose
their sense of direction, purpose and meaning. Many peak performers experience
that their focus on external success forces their inner and outer realities to drift
apart, resulting in a gap, which can grow into what many experience as a hole
in the soul. And, as many of these victims of the peak performance craze have
found, you can’t stuff enough titles, trophies, toys or status symbols into
this hole to fill it up.

Things simply won’t heal it.

We need to unlearn some of the success gurus’
principles, and create the right context for great success to emerge on a
sustainable, truly satisfying, wholesome basis.

In a way, success really isn’t such a big deal.

Success is simply a side-effect, a by-product, a result
of our actions.

The word success simply means: it
follows.

Thus the good news is that we are all highly
successful and we always succeed, whenever we get results.

We might just not always like the type of success we
reap.

Depending on the quality of our input, the resulting
output or success may be good, bad, or downright ugly. Judging by the
successful celebrity and executive suicides in recent years, even peak
performance may not provide us with the sense of satisfaction, significance, or
the inner peace and joy we may secretly be seeking.

Many peak performers I have talked with are not very
clear about their true motives, the underlying drivers of their need to
succeed. I have often found that these drivers include a need to prove
themselves to someone, a desire to belong, or an inner compulsion to overcome
some personal flaw they perceive in themselves. Many of the underlying emotional
drivers tend to be negative. Sometimes I ask myself what demons of their
distant past they are still running away from so desperately.

What is driving you to perform?

If we drive ourselves to achieve peak performance,
setting ourselves stretch objectives, visualizing success, and taking massive
action to secure our goals, out of a sense of lack or neediness, we may find
when we reach the very peak, the feelings we were running away from will be
there to welcome us.

Right after the peak performance party.

When we are all alone.

With nobody there to help us.

If you attach intense
negative emotions to a result you wish to generate, your subconscious mind will
typically provide you with more of these emotions. It seems that our mind sets
priorities in how it operates based on the frequency and intensity of input.
Thus, the more you hate, need, fear or dislike something and use this energy to
fuel your passion for peak performance, the more you may find yourself
manifesting these emotions over and over again in your reality.

If this is true at all,
what type of intensely positive emotions
would you need to attach to your life objectives, in order to ensure that when
you finally arrive, you will feel truly fulfilled?

Monday, January 18, 2016

„I have learned to
seek the elegant solution – the singular and deceptively simple idea with huge
impact that lies beyond the enormous complexity of the challenging business
problems we all face in our companies.“

Although he holds
that there are no simple recipes for elegance, Matthew May states in his
excellent book The Elegant Solution that the quest for elegance shapes true
innovation.

In the fields of
information technology, mathematics, science and engineering, elegant solutions
provide a surprisingly simple method, which is normally not obvious at first
sight, to produce a highly effective result, often solving multiple problems at
once - even problems, which may not be inter-related!

Truly elegant solutions solve multiple, often unrelated
problems

The Swiss army
knife may provide us with a practical, tangible illustration of such
elegance. The simple, straightforward surface design of this tool
is actually misleading, for although it is called a knife, it actually provides
multi-purpose functionality.

The basic version
normally includes:

a couple of knives

a pair of scissors

a cork-screw

a can-opener

a screwdriver

And so on…

Nowadays, many of
these Swiss army knives include cool gadgets like an altimeter, a USB-stick,
etc.

Too much of a good thing is the enemy of elegance

Trying to create too much "added value" may have a detrimental effect. Some designers
have included so many different gadgets and functionalities in to their version
of the Swiss army knife, that the result is a heavy, cumbersome, impractical tool, lacking the essential elegance of the original design.

In the process of
innovation, true elegance must strike a fine balance between complexity and
simplicity to create optimal value. To quote the January 2007 edition of Architecture
& Design: «Elegance allows for complexity to coincide with a
relative reduction of complication by integrating multiple elements into a
coherent, comprehensive, continuous and complete system, which can easily be
understood. »

As in the example
of the Swiss army knife, elegance requires a relative reduction of
complexity. The key to creating optimal value when creating new tools, methods,
models, concepts and solutions, is to strike the ideal balance between
simplicity of design and the usefulness of multifunctional complexity. If you
need to read a user’s manual before you can utilize a tool, product, solution
or process, it is probably not truly elegant.

According to my
research and experience, true elegance requires no formal explanation.

It speaks for
itself.

Find out more about how you can benefit from the secrets of true elegance: